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Chapter 108 Volume III - Chapter 29: The Choice of Virhen Family

"Bwother!"

I quickly turned toward the source of the sound, but unlike my turn, I started to run slowly toward the tree in the middle of the garden. While this was happening, a tiny figure passed by me as fast as it could and jumped into the tree I was running toward.

"I got here first! Me first!"

"Ah! You\'re pretty fast, huh, squirrel?"

I widened my smile, stopped being slow, and appeared next to him in an instant. My little brother puffed out his cheeks, his face suddenly pouting.

After saying goodbye to Aiden and Adrian, I left the academy and returned to my home, Virhen Manor. And now... it was up to me to take care of my little brother.

"I\'m not a squirrel! I\'m all grown up!"

I stroked his hair, messed it up, and laughed.

"Six years old is unfortunately old enough for you to be a squirrel."

"But I\'m faster than you!"

I smiled again, then in one swift movement I grabbed my brother by the armpits and threw him into the air.

His scream echoed around the garden, but he was not scared, on the contrary, he had a big smile on his face that showed he was enjoying himself, so I quickly caught him before he hit the ground, spun him around four times, and stopped him in his tracks.

That\'s how Nico, my brother, lost his balance and collapsed. He was obviously dizzy, but he had a big smile on his face.

"One more! One more!"

I picked him up again, but this time I didn\'t do anything more.

"That\'s enough, we\'ve been playing for a while. Let\'s go inside."

"But..."

I wanted to tug Nico\'s cheeks as he pouted, he was too cute, but just then I saw a maid approaching us.

"Your father and mother are calling you for lunch, sir."

"Okay, we\'ll be right there."

The maid bowed slightly and then, without another word, headed into the manor.

With those words, Nico had no more excuses, his face was still grim, but he accepted it. I picked him up and then made my way to the dining room, not forgetting to tug at his chubby cheeks.

He complained angrily that I tugged his cheek, but he quickly forgot about it and started talking about his own things. I listened to him the whole way, his inability to pronounce some words, his over-excited way of talking about even simple things was so sweet that I lost track of time until we reached the front of the room.

"This is where we get off."

I gently set Nico down and smiled as I smoothed his clothes and opened the door.

The dining room was quite spacious. Decorative things, paintings, miniature sculptures... The table in the center of the room was also big for the number of us and as far as I could see the whole family was at the table. My sister wasn\'t supposed to be here, but even she was present. Nico and I were the last ones at the table.

"Come, sit down."

It was my mom who spoke, with her short light brown hair and ocean blue eyes.

"Okay, Mom!"

Nico scurried over and quickly settled into his own chair. Then, with the spoon he was holding awkwardly, he began to drink the soup in front of him without waiting.

"You sit down too, Julian."

I smiled at my father\'s authoritative but friendly voice, then took my own seat.

He had blond hair and eyes as yellow as his hair. Although he was in his late forties, he didn\'t have any wrinkles. He had a serious expression, but it was a little less serious when he was among our family.

After my father, I turned to my sister, whom I hadn\'t seen face to face for a long time, and she was looking at Nico with a smile on her face.

"Welcome, sister."

Her hair was short, just like my mother\'s, but she had the same hair and eye color as my father, yellow. She was two years older than me, twenty, and when I called her, she turned to me and widened her smile.

"Welcome, Julian."

"Did you go somewhere not too rough, like you didn\'t get hurt this time?"

Knowing I was joking, she took a bite from her plate and smiled slightly.

"Well, you can say so. I was almost in a B grade dungeon, so it\'s not even close!"

"Oh, I thought you went to one of the D grade ones again."

"But you wouldn\'t have survived ten minutes in that D dungeon you despise, would you?"

I opened my mouth, I was about to say something when my father\'s voice echoed in the room.

"Enough."

Silence filled the room for a moment.

"It\'s okay to talk while you eat, but don\'t bring your own life into it."

"Speaking of talking... Last time you were trying to get the rights to one of the dungeons in Neutral, what\'s the latest?"

My father\'s eyes narrowed, an almost imperceptibly ugly expression appeared on his face for a moment, and he sighed deeply.

"They bid too high. If I can lower it a little, I\'ll take it, but it seems difficult for now."

"I see..."

"Why are you talking business at the table?"

My mother interrupted my father and me with her bright smile. Then she started asking me a lot of questions about my life at the academy.

Friends, things I was going through, my classes, and even whether I had a girlfriend.

I\'d be lying if I said I didn\'t enjoy spending time in the dining room like this. It felt really refreshing to be able to eat with the whole family chatting like this, especially after coming out of that... chaos.

So my sister was the first to get up from the table. She had finished eating a while ago, but she left, saying she had to work. After her, a silence fell over the table.

My father looked at my mother in silence. With a simple shake of her head, my mother took Nico in her arms, and then she left the room.

So it was just me and my father in the room, just like he wanted.

"Julian, listen to me carefully."

He was going to say something serious, I could tell.

"I\'m listening, Father."

"Do you still want to go to that academy?"

I narrowed my eyes and fixed them on the table, and my father, realizing this, didn\'t wait for me, he quickly interrupted.

"You realize the state of the media, the nobility, and the academy, don\'t you Julian? This is such a huge thing that the reputation of the academy has literally been destroyed. Many nobles have already pulled their children out of the academy and moved them elsewhere. Likewise, the lauded staff of the academy have started to leave. The media is reacting openly, the academy is being subjected to a massive lynching because of the deaths, and it is likely to be shut down as a result of all this. But I don\'t think the royals are going to close it down easily, they\'re going to keep it going somehow."

My father took a sip from the steaming glass in front of him and stared at me.

"I\'ve left everything up to you to decide your own life up until now. I\'ve let you do things as long as you didn\'t overdo them because I thought it was a mistake to restrict you since you are a freedom-loving person, but now I want you to be aware of the implications of the choice you\'re going to make."

He took another sip of his tea, finished it, then sighed a little.

Your attendance at that academy will show that we, the Virhen Family, are on the side of the academy. We will be on the radar of the media and our position will determine the movement of many nobles. In the same way, if you leave the academy, it will show that we are on the side of the media. Let me give you my opinion on this: You should leave that academy."

"I don\'t want to."

I gave a short answer, but it was enough for my father to give me an uncomfortable look.

"Why?"

"I... Well, you probably already know, but I was a bully all through middle school and high school."

He didn\'t look away even for a moment, but I could see his eyebrows raise slightly. Of course he knew everything I did, it would be absurd to think he didn\'t, but he must have been surprised that I was bringing it up now.

"I hated the weak, I loathed them, thinking that they were incompetent, that they had no qualifications for society, and this grew to such an extent that I liked to crush them on sight."

"So?"

My father was not the type to yell at me for telling him this. He was not a very moral person, even if he was a bit nicer in our family, and who knows what he had done behind the scenes that nobody knew about.

"But I\'m different now... well... not exactly different. I still don\'t like the weak, they\'re annoying to me. The way they accept what happens to them instead of trying to work for themselves makes me want to teach them a lesson, but now I restrain myself. I\'ve come to the conclusion that it\'s ridiculous to oppress them, all I get out of it is their hatred. Nothing more."

I took a deep breath, my eyes fixed firmly on his this time.

"It was the friends I made that made me realize this. They didn\'t approach me because I was noble, because my family name was Virhen. They accepted me for who I was, and we really had fun together, we smiled and studied and spent time together."

"So you don\'t want to leave them?"

"Yes. I didn\'t go to the academy for my future anyway, we both know that. I know that my sister refuses to be the head of the family, and even if I stop studying, I will still be the head of the family, and as long as I prove myself, no one will care whether I study or not, about my past, or whether I study in a discredited academy. So I want to stay in the academy."

My father was silent for a while, then sighed again.

The intense atmosphere in the room, the deep silence made me tense for a moment. Yet I waited until the end, not moving a muscle, not interrupting my father in any way while he was thinking, deciding what to do.

Finally, after a few seconds that felt like minutes to me, he put a slight smile on his face.

"As I said, you are the one who will decide your own life, Julian. If you want to stay at the academy, fine, you can stay."

I let out the breath I had been holding, feeling relieved, and a smile appeared on my face too.

"Thanks, Father."

"But remember, as I said before, your choice reflects the choice of our family. If you continue to go there, it will show that we are on the side of the academy and we will get a media backlash."

I replied without even blinking.

"I know."

He stood up and looked me in the eyes again.

"Alright, then we don\'t need to bring this up again. Now... you seem to be interested in the family business. So do you want to stay by my side, help me, at least until you go back to the academy?"

I stood up too, nodded in agreement as I put a smile back on my face and spoke with the relief of having taken care of this matter.

"Yes, I\'d be happy to."